A vita attributed to
Dado of Rouen presents a detailed account of the life of
this important church reformer of Merovingian France. Dado
provides a physical description:

He was tall with a rosy face. He had a pretty
head of hair with curly locks. His hands were honest and
his fingers long. He had the face of an angel and a
prudent look. At first, he was used to wear gold and
gems on his clothes… [But] as he proceeded to
perfection, he gave the ornaments for the needs of the
poor. Then you would see him, whom you had once seen
gleaming with the weight of the gold and gems that
covered him, go covered in the vilest clothing with a
rope for a belt.

In Dado, St. Eligius first comes to the attention of King
Clotar II when the latter calls for a golden saddle to be
made.1 No one
employed by the palace is able to create such a thing, but
Eligius is. The saint then becomes first a goldsmith to Clotar, then later an
adviser to him and to his successor Dagobert, and
finally a bishop.

According to Duchet-Suchaux (132-33) one
legend has it that Eligius started out as a farrier who
one day "cut off a horse's hoof to shoe it with greater
ease; once the work was done, he simply replaced the whole
hoof" (image).
This episode is the usual subject of narrative images, yet
it is not in Dado nor in any
medieval source that I could locate. It may have arisen
from the saddle story, or perhaps early images with the
goldsmith's implements shown large enough to be
recognizable led later artists and storytellers to
misinterpret them as farrier's tools.

Duchet-Suchaux (ibid.) writes that Eligius is also
sometimes shown pinching the devil's nose, resuscitating a
hanged man, or advising Clotar or Dagobert.

Portraits represent him either at work in his shop,
as in the image at left, or standing dressed as a bishop with the tools
of his former trade as his attributes (example).